Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

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women, fire and dangerous things
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Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

This is a preliminary announcement for my next side event, Logomachy, a tournament all about words. As I'm a noted word lover and professional word guy, this is, in one sense, my most vanity side tournament yet. But in an equally important sense it's much less vanity than Scattergories, because it's intended to be of interest to all players, even those who don't think of themselves as word people. To that end, it will draw from all categories of the distribution, and will be pitched at around Regionals difficulty, with tossups hard-capped at 7 lines.

All the non-giveaway clues in the set will be about words and phrases in some meaningful sense. By that, I mean that there won't be, say, a common link on some unrelated books that happen to have the same word in the title (e.g. the tossup on "oblivion" from Scattergories 2 cluing A General Theory of Oblivion and David Foster Wallace's Oblivion). An example of the sort of thing that might come up in this tournament is the Scattergories 5 tossup on "homo," cluing social science phrases like "homo economicus" - that tossup is really about the common formula "homo ___," so it's more meaningfully about the word. Questions will cover etymology, grammar and usage, philology, the literary and artistic use of words, scientific nomenclature, controversies about words, wordplay, and so forth. Of course, you can expect linguistics content, but there will be very few clues which require significant theoretical linguistics knowledge to buzz on. Other examples from Scattergories to give a feel for what this set will be like include the Scattergories 3 tossup on Macbeth cluing words that the play introduced, and the Scattergories 3 tossup on hawks cluing falconry terminology, largely drawn from H Is for Hawk. (Another good example is Will Alston's tossup on kakistocracy from the latest CO, though none of the answerlines in Logomachy will be that hard.)

There will be 10 packets, with the following tentative distribution:

2 literature
1 history
1 science
1 philosophy/non-linguistics social science
1 religion/mythology
1 fine arts
1 modern world
2 pop culture
10 miscellaneous (including linguistics, mixed, general knowledge, other academic, and more of the above categories)

As I said above, I'm working on making this tournament accessible and interesting to all, so I hope you'll consider playing it even if a tournament all about words doesn't necessarily seem like it would be up your alley.
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by Themanfromkirksville »

Really cool idea! More like Pogomachy in my opinion.
Last edited by Themanfromkirksville on Wed Feb 02, 2022 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by Mike Bentley »

I use words!
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Image
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by CPiGuy »

Auks Ran Ova wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 2:56 am Image
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

the absolute madman just cut the objects from words and objects
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by alexdz »

This tournament is for me and I love it.
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

I'm looking to get started on playtesting for this set starting soon, and would love to have a diverse set of testers, especially since this set includes categories that I don't typically write for. If you'd be willing to playtest, please get in touch!
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

This set is now ready for mirroring, so if you're interested in running it as a side event somewhere, please get in touch! I'll also plan an online mirror at some point in the near future.
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

There's now a private discussion forum set up for Logomachy, which people who played the set at Maryland can apply to join.
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by Jem Casey »

This set is an absolute delight, play it if you get the chance!
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by jinah »

This set is very good and has what feels like a little something for everyone, whether you identify as someone who is “into words” or very much do not. It’s also definitely easier than Scattergories while still being both entertaining and edifying.
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

This set is so good and full of fresh ideas, it makes me wonder why there hasn't been (at least!) a 1/1 Words distribution at every tournament this whole time. Future editors: consider adding dedicated Words content to your sets forever?
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Re: Logomachy (side event, late 2022)

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

This set is now clear, and the packets should appear on the archive shortly. Thanks to everyone who played!
Will Nediger
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